


all it took was the traumatic

by clairvoie



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dissociation, On the Run, One Shot, Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-Fall (Hannibal), a handful of metaphors, consequences of trauma, hannibal rly loves will but we already know this, nothing really happens except Will contemplates things and Hannibal wakes up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-05 22:28:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13397577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clairvoie/pseuds/clairvoie
Summary: He faltered with the tying of the knot as a thin voice croaked out behind him from the body on the bed, from Hannibal.“Hello,” he said. So simply, it made Will smile despite himself.





	all it took was the traumatic

**Author's Note:**

> I love you more than the world can contain  
> In its lonely and ramshackle head  
> There's only a shadow of me, in a manner of speaking I'm dead

The first shower after his bandages came off was equal parts soothing, relieving, and jarring. At first, the beat of heated water loosened knots in his back, his neck, as he craned it under the stream. But as soon as the water began to run cold with its minimal supply, such a comforted feeling was quickly swept away by the hastened pull back to his reality. Suddenly his wounds screamed more harshly in their ache than when the water was beating his back into a raging red.

 

He stepped out of the tub, wrapped a towel with frayed ends around his dripping waist, and moved to smear a hand down the fogged mirror on the wall. Stitches were holding fine, hair getting too long past his ears already, cheek ruined by a mess of green bruises like a fairy circle. He made an effort not to touch his face.

 

The house was quiet, save for the sound of his wet feet padding across the wood, leaving prints in his wake.

 

Hannibal, similarly, had the skin of his belly marred with a barrage of yellow and green spots, much larger than Will’s; his wound much more expansive, more infiltrated into the fabric of his gut. At the edge of the ocean, Will had almost forgotten its presence, with the adrenaline-filled state of Hannibal dragging Will’s body out of the water. Such strength had been solely a fluke, it turned out, as Hannibal would, not long after spewing poetic into the dark of night, fall into unconsciousness.

 

The first week was messy; Chiyoh provided what she could find, and what was already in the location she somehow knew enough about to get her and the other two men to safely. Hannibal slept, Will slept, and Chiyoh eventually disappeared when the former woke to full alertness three days in a row.

 

Will found his mind floating somewhere distant on the ocean, no real ends in sight, no lighthouses beckoning home or further out, just the lull of the churning waves, and the light of a yellow moon. Whilst his mind was elsewhere, he could not help his body from feeling as if it was continuously falling off the bluff. Free falling once more, with no room for cogent, nor critical thought. He slaved away to the calls of ever-present infection scares, and the stitches which seemed to have a mind of their own inside the skin of his cheek.

 

He could barely contemplate the situation before him, the reality of Hannibal’s presence, the weight of the wedding band on his finger, the whistle of the wind outside by the curve of the mountain; nothing stuck.

 

The mirror-face seemed more a face from some childish nightmare, rather than his own.

 

Holding a mug of coffee, his hands seemed to separate from the cuffs of his forearms, arms floated a little further out from where they usually did from his shoulder sockets. Time slipped by and simultaneously droned on like hours were days, and like Hannibal had been asleep for years.

 

Back in the bigger bedroom, he stood in the doorway, watching the body on the bed. Chest uncovered for easier access to the wound, and pulling up and down with struggle to let the air in. The body breathed, and rarely moved, and sometimes made soft whistle noises through the nose, heard loudly on nights when Will couldn’t sleep.

 

His shower-steamed hair dripped onto the floor, _tap tap tap_ ; his feet twitched despite himself, and his hands itched to pull the blankets back and hide himself beneath them like a child. His hands itched also to smother the body with a pillow, to stop the soft noises, the sleeping so sound it breathed threatening with the possibility of awakening at any moment.

 

Yet he was afraid of going to sleep and waking to a cold body one day. The idea of the man slipping away in the night, while the mountains kept whistling and Will kept breathing through a punctured cheek; it kept him up in the dark, eyes tracing the line of the chest beside him, hoarding every sight of life. Perhaps it would be kinder to let him go in his sleep, someone might have said, but something about it made the bones in Will’s legs shake. He would have only the woods to go into, should the man die. It would be kinder, they said again, to give his own body to the cold wind.

 

He rubbed the towel through his hair, soaking up excess water, and moved to slip on a new-ish pair of string-drawn pants. He faltered with the tying of the knot as a thin voice croaked out behind him from the body on the bed, from Hannibal.

 

“Hello,” he said. So simply, it made Will smile despite himself.

 

The bandage stuck to his skin by the surgical tape placed around it. It most likely wouldn’t have to be cleaned till tomorrow, but he pushed the thought away as he moved to peel it back with his fingers. The swelling and heated redness around the wound had gone down, a good sign. He was speaking with his eyes flicking around with intent, instead of hazy moments of clarity, additional good signs. Perhaps Hannibal was steering further away from the infection scares Will had encountered miserably after Chiyoh had left indefinitely.

 

“The wound is looking better. That’s good. Do you want some water?” Will asked as he had already begun making his way out of the bedroom to the kitchen, feet carrying him quickly to the sink to pour a glass.

 

Hannibal sipped from the glass slowly, having been helped to sit against pillows propped straight against the headboard. Every swallow seemed to become less and less of a task, and more like a cooling relief. Will remembered that feeling. He had forgotten the unfavourable taste of salt water trapped in his throat for awhile.

 

After setting the glass down, Hannibal turned his head to the side. And, resting it against the top of the headboard like it was uncharacteristically heavy, he gazed at Will in contemplation.

 

“How long?” He asked.

 

“Verging on a week and a half,” Will replied evenly, simply stating the fact, and reserving any kind of vocal revelation that could somehow betray him. There were still things he wished to own privately, at least for now.

 

Hannibal nodded.

 

Collected as usual, it seemed, and Will thought to hate him for it, with little avail.

 

“The bullet exited. Seems to have… avoided the vital spots.” Seems you didn’t bleed to death, seems you didn’t drown in sepsis. _Could they speak of anything other than wounds…_

 

“Will you stay?” Hannibal asked. Right to the point, and perhaps out of left field, but appreciated nonetheless. Like children outgrowing games, Will was eager to leave behind the mine fields of conversation and the abstracting of the roads ahead, at least to a point. To this point. Unfortunately he found himself now to be deflecting with silence instead of words.

 

“Yes.” 

 

Hannibal smiled. “I’m glad.”

**Author's Note:**

> hello! thx for reading
> 
> if you leave a comment, i'll love u 4ever.


End file.
